Everyone loves a good mystery, but not when it comes to your business’s finances. Unfortunately, incidents of fraud are soaring, and the perpetrators’ attacks are becoming a lot more sophisticated. Among the many business impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic was a shift to digital financial transactions.
The damage from accounting scandals extends beyond shareholders and employees, affecting local and global economies as well as investors. The financial well-being of companies and individuals depends on preventing accounting crimes, detecting them quickly when they occur, and responding effectively to contain the damage they inflict.
Organizations worldwide watch 5% of their annual revenue go right out the window due to a single cause: fraud. That is one of the findings reported in the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) 2020 Report to the Nations, a global study on occupational fraud and abuse. Accounting fraud is defined as fraud that involves theft and other crimes committed by accountants or related to an organization’s accounting methods and practices.
Fraudulent payments are one of the most common forms of financial fraud faced in accounts payable. To help prevent this from happening organizations can separate duties so that the person who approves invoices and the person who authorizes payments are never the same.
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